Next generation ethanol company Coskata on Wednesday announced an agreement with ICM Inc. to design and construct a commercial ethanol plant using Coskata’s biological fermentation technology.
Last month, the young company made a splash at the North American international Auto Show in Detroit where a strategic partnership with General Motors was announced.
Bill Roe, president and CEO of Coskata said, “Coskata and ICM will speed the commercialization of a process that will convert biomass into advanced biofuels from a number of renewable materials, at a production cost of less than $1 a gallon.”
According to Dave Vander Griend, president and CEO of ICM Coskata’s thermal biomass conversion process offers promising technology.
“It has always been ICM’s mission to help sustain agriculture through innovation,” Vander Griend said. “Coskata’s production process makes them a valuable ally as we continue to pursue advancements in renewable technology towards the creation of advanced and cellulosic biofuels as directed by the recent Energy Bill.”
The location of the first Coskata plant will be announced at a later date, but officials say they expect the facility to open in 2010.
“The bottom line is that the energy balance of biodiesel has definitely improved in the last decade,” says University of Idaho Department Head of Biological and Agricultural Engineering Jon Van Gerpen, who credits Assistant Professor Dev Shrestha and graduate student Anup Pradhan for their work on the study. “The increase in soybean yields and a decrease in herbicide use greatly contributed to the increased energy balance. Meanwhile, energy used for crushing soybeans is significantly lower than what was reported in the NREL study.”
One of the most popular sessions at this week’s 
He says that food items where corn and soybeans play a major role only account about 25 percent of the food basket.
The president of the 
The three-year study will focus on land use in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, western Minnesota and northern Iowa. “If you look at one of the maps by the Renewable Fuels Association, the hotspot of the activity is in this area,” said professor Geoff Henebry, a senior scientist in the Geographic Information Science Center of Excellence (GIScCE) at SDSU.
According to the 
Keep in mind this is only the fifth annual conference for this industry and about 4,000 people are at the event with almost 400 exhibitors. Many of the booths are showcasing new technology for the industry – while others, like New Holland, are focusing on the fun stuff.
Bark beetles are busy little buggers in the Rocky Mountain region these days, killing off swaths of trees thanks to a couple of warmer winters that have kept them more active than normal.
One of the companies at the 2008 National Biodiesel Conference and Expo is Solazyme, a company that is making biodiesel out of algae. In fact, the folks from Solazyme brought a sweet ride to the conference… a Mercedes Benz C320 that runs on the green fuel made from the green algae.